poetry

On Tuesday, Feb. 5, the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery came alive with the sights and sounds of black talent. “#HellaBlack: BCA Mixtape Vol. 1” was a one-night pop-up celebration of Boston’s wide-ranging artists of color.

A lineup of interdisciplinary and multimedia artists with diverse gender and racial identities, including Boston’s current poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola, performed at the second annual “Poetry is Busy: En Voz Abierta/Into the Unfolded Voice” show at the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts in the South End last Friday.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced Porsha Olayiwola has been appointed as the City of Boston's new Poet Laureate, a role she will formally begin on January 1, 2019.

Boston-based Nigerian author D. M. Aderibigbe debuted his first book of poetry this month with the University of Wisconsin Press. “How the End First Showed” draws on his own experience growing up in Lagos. Aderibigbe writes with beautiful simile and chilling rhythm about the domestic violence he witnessed as a child. He hopes the poems will serve as a call to action not to brush spousal abuse under the rug.

Visitors to Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology may be seen wandering around the museum with headphones on. They’re listening to a playlist curated specifically for the Peabody experience. Instead of Top 40 hits, the playlist features eight poems read by Native American authors. The recording allows guests to hear artistic works produced by Native artists in addition to seeing historical objects of Native peoples.